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TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 03, 2004 SunGard Acquires Collegis Bumpy Start for E-Voting Supreme Court Considers COPA, Again Camera Phones Banned in Scottish Schools SUNGARD ACQUIRES COLLEGIS Following its acquisition in December of SCT Corporation, SunGard Data Systems has announced it will acquire Collegis, further boosting the company's stake in higher education. According to Bob Clarke, head of SunGard's higher education division, Collegis customers should expect to see no changes, either in services they receive or people they work with, in the short term. Tom Huber, president and CEO of Collegis, will retain his current duties with the new company, to be called SunGard Collegis. Michael Zastrocky of Gartner Inc. said a potential concern for Collegis customers will be whether the new company will push products from its sibling company, SunGard SCT. Previously, Collegis, which has more than 100 clients and provides services to more than 500 campuses, has sold technology services but not software. According to Zastrocky, the new company's biggest challenge will be "how to maintain that objectivity." Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 March 2004 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2004/03/2004030201n.htm BUMPY START FOR E-VOTING A variety of technical glitches befell electronic voting systems in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primaries, the first large-scale test of such technologies. Critics of electronic voting said the problems, including frozen screens and nonfunctioning voting terminals, foreshadow much more significant troubles in November's general election, when 50 million people are expected to vote electronically. Opponents of the new technology also noted that e-voting machines do not create a permanent record of votes cast, raising the possibility of fraud and contested election results. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) had introduced a bill that would require a paper trail for e-voting systems. Supporters of the technology said Tuesday's problems were relatively minor and are to be expected of any new system. They said the e-voting machines are much better than outdated punch-card and lever systems and attributed many of Tuesday's problems to human error. Wall Street Journal, 3 March 2004 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107833044855045393,00.html SUPREME COURT CONSIDERS COPA, AGAIN The Supreme Court this week heard arguments again over the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA), marking the second time the high court has considered the law, designed to shield minors from "harmful" material on the Internet. Last year the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that the law is unconstitutional because it relies on "community standards" to determine what content is harmful. This time, the lower court offered several grounds on which to declare the law unconstitutional. COPA is Congress's second attempt at passing a law to place restrictions on Internet content, after the Communications Decency Act of 1996 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997. The American Civil Liberties Union and a large number of Web site operators have challenged COPA, saying it will censor online content. The government said the law is necessary to rein in Internet pornography, which is "causing irreparable injury" to children. New York Times, 3 March 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/national/03SCOT.html CAMERA PHONES BANNED IN SCOTTISH SCHOOLS Primary and secondary students in West Lothian schools in Scotland will be prohibited from using camera phones in schools under a new regulation announced this week. School officials said the decision resulted from growing concern that such cell phones could be used to take pictures that could fall into the hands of pedophiles. Although no evidence exists that camera phones have been used in that manner, school officials said they wanted to address the issue before it became a serious problem. Carol Bartholomew of the West Lothian Council said, "We have a responsibility to protect people" and noted that "with mobiles you can be totally unaware of someone taking a picture." BBC, 2 March 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3524913.stm ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your settings, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html Or, you can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName To UNSUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF Edupage If you have subscription problems, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For past issues of Edupage or information about translations of Edupage into other languages, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/ ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE PUBLICATIONS EDUCAUSE publishes periodicals, including "EQ" and "EDUCAUSE Review," books, and other materials dealing with the impacts and implications of information technology in higher education. 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